This week in Cedar Rapids
- Sustainability Club Presents: Nitrates and Radon in Iowa Water
Wed, Oct 28 · 10 AM · Kirkwood Main Campus Cedar Rapids
About Cedar Rapids
Cedar Rapids grew up beside the last set of rapids on the Cedar River, where the first mill was built in the early 1840s, and the river still runs right through the heart of town, around Mays Island, where the Veterans Memorial Building and the Linn County Courthouse stand. Czech families arrived early, making up about a quarter of the town by 1856, and their story lives on in the shops and bakery of Czech Village and at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, now a Smithsonian Affiliate. The big oat mill built in 1873 was one of four that merged in 1901 to form Quaker Oats, and it grew into the company's flagship and the largest cereal mill in the world; it still anchors the north side of downtown. Grant Wood worked here, and it was in his Cedar Rapids studio that he added the two famous figures to American Gothic, modeling the farmer on the family dentist from town; the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art holds the largest collection of his paintings anywhere. In June 2008 the river crested at more than 31 feet, flooding over a thousand city blocks, the Paramount Theatre and the Czech museum among them, and neighbors spent the following years rebuilding, reopening the museum in 2012 and restoring the Paramount. These days the City of Five Seasons fills its calendar with story times at the library, holiday nights at Brucemore, and Orchestra Iowa on the Paramount stage.